Category: Cars

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Cars

Rolls Royce in Gumball 3000 : (

Gumball 3000 is not my favourite motoring event. Actually, I don’t like the idea of racing on public roads while people are driving without knowing that you are racing. Also the way they dress up the cars! There are always very nice cars in this race; Rolls Royce, Bentley, Bugatti and others. These brands have heritage and unique character but dressing up these cars for like you go to a Halloween party is not looking very nice to me! This is totally objective. Actually, I don’t like to modify cars in any way!
A few days ago Gumball 3000 started again and as usual there are many very nice cars. The most pathetic one was the Rolls Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe. This car is the Rolls Royce’s very unique model with an exquisite design and I can clearly state this; Phantom Drophead Coupe is the most elegant, the best looking, the most exquisite car on planet. Every single detail of this car is excellent. However it appeared on Gumball 3000 in pink colour! Like this, you can see from the picture. This is the time, words became senseless. You can watch this on 03:08 from the Youtube video.
Picture are taken from;
Rolls Royce Website
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Cars

Clean Bentley

Bentley Mulsanne, nowadays it is one of the very hot news in automotive industry. Nearly every week, we received news announcement about Arnage replacement, Mulsanne. Bentley’s new car with 6.75lt engine. Yes, still Bentley has the pre-historic engine! I guess they do not wish to send away this engine. In couple of year, VW will manage to develop four hundred horsepower from 1.4lt engine and Bentley would still be using fifty year old 6.75lt V8. That’s a nice engine but please, we are living in 2010! Even the new Rolls Royce Ghost has a new engine.
Anyway, let’s move from engine to something else. Bentley’s brand identity is based on luxury, technology, exquisite quality. You can understand this on their website, in their dealers across the world, on their cars and even in their press releases. So, you would be expecting perfect quality in every single detail, and Bentley is very good doing that expect in one place. Bentley cars are manufactured excellent in details, I don’t have any doubts about this. But I noticed something very interesting and I am bit disappointed. The press release video from Bentley which is about leather craft in Mulsanne. This is a very short time frame, the camera zooms to employee’s hand and the wood, then we see that his nails are that not clean! Rolls Royce never misses this kind of detail, even Mercedes or BMW. And Bentley suppose to do the same like other brands, because these videos are played whole over the world. Everything on that video should reflect their brand identity.
So, this minor details can be understood very differently in some markets. Each market has its own cultural underpinning and their customs, in some markets employee are reflecting the product and the brand. And an employee whoc is not clean enough might me reflecting an adverse image for the brand and for the product. Like; if he is not paying attention to cleanness, maybe he is not paying attention to my future Bentley’s cleanness.
Minor details make major differences ;)
Time frame for the snapshop: 02:48
Pictures and Video are taken from;
Bentley Website
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Cars

What is Countryman?

The Mini! Excellence of repackaging :) Personally I never liked the Mini. It is a very well made and a very nice car, it is combining the Mini heritage with sophisticated technology. BMW made a very good job and never ruined the heritage. However, I never like the Mini :( Despite its unique characteristics, it was a brand which is not very close to me. This is totally emotional! In my opinion, Alfa Romeo MiTo and Fiat 500 are totally much better looking cars than the Mini. Also Fiat 500 is slightly better than Mini while packing the heritage with contemporary automotive world. Especially the price. Mini is a overpriced car, that’s absolutely clear. You pay too much money for a small car. Macro priced, micro sized!
As usual BMW, transposed its product extension strategy to Mini, and Mini introduced the Clubman which looks like a Ford Transit from the back. It could not manage to achieve a success like normal Mini but some people bought it. And Mini followed the popular culture in automotive business and design a Mini SUV which is totally pointless. Yes, there is no competitor in this segment and it will collect the whole potential customers, if they are existed! Until now everything is fine, normal German style extension strategy in a British car.
But the most stupidest thing is, Mini Countryman (SUV) is not four wheel drive! Yes, it will be front wheel drive and you can have the four wheel drive only with S model. Very nice! A very expensive SUV which is not a proper SUV! I know, there are some SUV like this on market; they are only front wheel drive but they are not asking a price which is more expensive than an island! Those front wheel drive SUVs are cheap! This Clubman front wheel drive partial SUV will a very interesting car from Mini.
Actually more interesting than Apple iPad. Despite its pointless disadvantages, like Apple iPad, some people will just buy because it looks nice. Nicer than Mini Clubman and people will buy this weird SUV just to own it :)
Pictures are taken from;
Mini and Apple Websites
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Cars

iRing, sorry that’s Bull Ring!

For last three weeks I am Birmingham, UK. A demand of popular culture, when we move to a new city, we have to visit the shopping malls before the museums :) So I did the same and I end up in Bull Ring. This shopping centre has a very distinctive architecture; shopping mall is not limited by roads or anything else instead, it became a part of environment. Some part of the Bull Ring is under the road some part is over the road. Actually it is a bit confusing, when you first visit you cannot realize where you are and you will start thinking, did I visit this part. It is a very nicely designed and a bit confusing shopping mall. Until you get use to it, you might get lost or never visit some of it parts.
When I was confused in Bull Ring, I remembered the time I got confused in BMW’s first generation iDrive interface. Actually it was suppose to help drive to access menus and settings very easily without any confusion but you have to be either ten years old or you have to have a master degree of engineering. If you cannot satisfy these two criteria, you will not able to use iDrive. So BMW realized the pointless iDrive technology and revised many times. Now, it is more usable and less confusing. But why BMW waited for such a long time to understand their mistake.
This is the same with designing a building, it might look very nice and unique but when you wish to use it, it may not be as exciting as you imagined. Actually, making a revision in a building is much much harder than making a revision in a software.

Pictures are taken from;
BMW and Bullring Websites

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Cars

Enzo Ferrari: The Movie

Recently the movie business started to release movies related with brand creators. Karl Lagerfeld, German fashion designer; Valentino Italian fashion designer and Anne Wintour, Vogue’s legendary editor.

Sure, these movies are not like block buster ones, which you can watch in everywhere on earth but they are effective to understand who they are and what their brands are.

Founder of legendary Italian brand Ferrari, Enzo Ferrari has a movie also. It was shot in 2002 but nobody knows it. Actually it is quite hard to find its DVD even on internet. I don’t know why! And even in Ferrari Store’s web site, there is nothing called Enzo Ferrari Movie. They helped to make this movie but they are not selling the DVD, this is quite unusual for a company which is even selling paper weights with Ferrari logo.
This movie is explaining how the Ferrari brand was born and what sacrifices Enzo Ferrari suffered. It is not about just cars or engines, it is about a person’s life that is devoted to create a car. After this movie, I started to interpret Ferrari brand in a different way. I could see what is underneath this heritage. Hopefully we could still see the trace of this heritage in every Ferrari car and Enzo Ferrari’s sacrifices achieved the success.

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Cars

No Comment: Tesla Model S – Maserati GranTurismo

Maserati GranTurismo and new Tesla Model S
Pictures are taken from;
Maserati and Worldcarfans Websites
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Cars

VW China, hybrid bicycle !

Nowadays bicycles became very popular to car companies! May be focusing on China market and involving with their culture influence the manufacturers and they decided to manufacture bicycles besides cars. Yesterday I mentioned about the pointless and good looking Lexus hybrid bicycle and today VW announced their hybrid bicycle!
However, VW’s bicycle looks quite descent. It worth to be tried at least once. But I would not planning to buy it! VW’s bicycle might be good for riding for once but if I wish to own a bicycle I would be buying from bike company! I guess, VW and Lexus are focusing on how to increase our market share in China with whatever product we can make :)
Picture is taken from;
Worldcarfans Website
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Cars

Enviromental Bicycle by Lexus :O

In automotive industry you can find many interesting things! As I mentioned earlier, you can have Porsche power drill, weird looking car branded shoes, pointlessly expensive car branded pencils and many interesting things, until now. Today, the world’s the most boring car brand announced something more pointless than Porsche’s power drill. Hybrid bicycle! Yes, a hybrid, an environmental bicycle. People who has nobody about hybrids, I would like to explain quickly. Hybrid is a technology which combine electric and petrol engine together to reduce CO2 level and offer more economy. This technology is designed for vehicle which are running with combustion engine not with feet!
Lexus’s obsession with hybrid concept helped to reveal this ultimately pointless bicycle. Who on earth will going to buy a hybrid bicycle. I know there are many people who bought Apple iPad without knowing what to do with that but this is more pointless than iPad. Bicycle suppose to be ride by feet for sport or for fitness not to save the earth! Or to show off that I care environment and I ride this pointless thing.
The batteries are charged by regenerative brakes, I hope that these brakes are working properly. And it has 8 speed auto gearbox with 240W electric motor. Actually there is one thing nice in this bike, its design. Lexus’s success on dull design on cars cannot be seen on this bicycle and I do hope that they will try this on their cars also ;)
Pictures are taken from;
Lexus and Worldcarfans Websites
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Cars

Home made Ad Blue

As far as I could from the reports from Google Analytics, Ad Blue is top of the Google search results for my blog. Some of the were looking for what is Ad Blue, what we can use instead of Ad Blue. For those of you who don’t know anything about Ad Blue. I would like to explain it quickly.

Ad Blue is a liquid which helps to reduce NOx in diesel engine. Unlike petrol engine, diesel engine are producing NOx as a result of combustion process. So Ad Blue is something very environmental and easy to find :)

Like car companies suggested, try to buy Ad Blue from petrol station and do not use your own! Yes, everyone has Ad Blue :) Because it is pee or we can say it more polite urine! If you need Ad Blue in the middle of nowhere, you can use yours ;) But be very careful!

Categories
Cars

Fat Maybach

In 1997, I can clearly remember the date when I saw first pictures of future Mercedes which will be named as Maybach. Maybach was left sleeping for nearly four decades and Mercedes launched the brand with an electro shock which was done by old Mercedes S Class (W220). Finally Maybach was on production in 2002! The features and technology was beyond imagination like its price tag. At the same time, Rolls Royce was working on new Phantom and Bentley was refurbished by Volkswagen. So the competition was getting tougher!
And Maybach revealed to market, however it was sharing too much in common with S Class. Actually Maybach was a stretched and pumped version of S Class. Or I can summarized it like this; Maybach is paint which was done by Botero.
Botero is well known painter who is expressing his ideas in terms of fat people and objects. He is exagratting the figures and objects to express the ideas. Maybach was like that, expressed the passion of Mercedes to go fight with Rolls Royce and Bentley with a S Class. It was basically a S Class with luxury.
And weirdly, current S Class is offering very similar features like Maybach and relatively cheaper! This also had impact on Maybach’s sales performance. Despite its enormous engine power which can be used in World Rally Championship did not help Maybach to win! In UK last year, only seven Maybachs were sold. Just 7!
A few days ago Mercedes revealed a video for face lifted Maybach which will be introduced in China Motor Show. And the movie was took place in China with Chinese casting. This clearly Shows that, Mercedes is hopeless for Western market and they try their last chance in China. As matter of fact, Maybach is a great car but too expensive for a Mercedes

Pictures are taken from;
Mercedes Website and NTV.com.tr